Weekend in Mostar Part I

I spent the weekend in Mostar, which i think might actually be the most beautiful city i have ever seen. It's about a 3 hour busride southwest of Sarajevo, and is in the Hercegovina part of BiH. It is also on the Neretva River, and has more of a Mediterranean climate than nothern Bosnia. It was one of the hardest-hit cities in the war and alot of it has not recovered as well as other parts of BiH. It is similar to Sarajevo in that it has a city centar that is characterized by Austro-Hungarian architecture, and an "old town" with Ottoman architecture, where people still sell their crafts in open shops where you can watch them create.

"Stari Most," or "old bridge" is a famous monument that was destroyed in the war, and rebuilt to precisely resemble the original one. It's kind of considered a "crossroads" between the mostly Bosnian Muslim eastern side of the river, and the mostly Bosnian Croat (most of whom are Catholics) western side, although alot of inhabitants consider that to just be symbolic as people have lived, as in other places in BiH, integrated lives for hundreds of years. Here are several photos of Stari Most, which apparently is one of the biggest tourist attractions in all of BiH. In these photos i had just crossed the bridge from the west to the east side and was standing in the old town beside the river.







































































The Bridge is also famous because every summer they hold diving contests. I saw some of the divers practicing- yikes! The brigde is very high and the current in that area of the Neretva is very strong and fast.

Several mosques in Mostar are open to tourists, so i went inside this one and took photos.










This is the mosque.

















The sebijl (fountain) in the mosque courtyard.










The front of the mosque where people pray five times a day.

















Underneath the dome outside at the front entrance.










Below are some photos of the inside of the mosque.










































































This is the entrance to the stairwell up the minaret.


















The winding stairwell was very narrow and there were 90 steps up...









Here are some photos i took from the top of the minaret of Stari Most

Swimming in Turquoise Waters

Sunday Courtney and I went to Konjic (pronounced KONE-yeets) which is a little town about an hour and a half outside of Sarajevo. While waiting for the tram to the bus station in Sarajevo, we saw this building. I am not sure what it was, but it got shelled pretty badly.





































After arriving at Konjic, we wandered around trying to find the beach and stopped to have ice cream for lunch (for the second day in a row...) We asked several people and found the beach. It is on the Neretva River, which is this amazingly pure turquoise color that my camera could not adequately capture. If you look closely, you can see a boy jumping off the cliff into the water.
























When we got to the beach we realized we did not have beach towels, so tried to find some in a few stores by the beach. We went into one little convenience store-type place and met this guy who i think must have been in high school, who took us all over town trying to find beach towels for us. We told him that wasn't necessary and we would be fine, but like i mentioned before, that is just how most people are here. We couldn't find one because a lot of stores are closed on sunday, but got a nice tour of Konjic regardless!








































There were a lot of families at the beach with cute little kids running around splashing in the water. The water was sooooo refreshing; it has been so hot in Sarajevo and air conditioning doesn't really exist, so plunging into this beautiful, cold river was incredibly invigorating. It was amazing for me to be in the turquoise Neretva River in Bosnia, surrounded by a bunch of happy families, and to hear the imam's call to prayer from the mosque that was beside this bridge that was heavily damaged in the war.

I had this brilliant idea to sort of shoot myself off of this rock formation that was in the water that kind of created a sort of water slide and went into a strong current, and then just allow myself to be carried down the river by the current. I failed to account for the boulders that were also in the path of the current, and crashed into several. Courtney managed to catch me after crashing into a particularly large boulder, which knocked off my flip flop. That is me being carried away by the current, reaching for my flip flop. I did it several times though :) Sorry the photo is so small...













No adventure would be complete without a Sarajevska Pivo




I forgot to include these photos earlier. On Friday, Courtney and I went to another amazing restaurant on the hills surrounding Sarajevo. This time I decided it would be best to take a cab. It was on the opposite hill; the first hill-top restaurant I went to was on the north side of the city, and this one is on the south. The south hill (well they are actually mountains) i belive is called something like Trebinjik and is still heavily mined in some areas, so we obviously stayed on paved roads. The view, again, was stunning.








































































































So was the food. We got a cheese plate to start, with some cheese made by Trappist monks. I would have taken a picture of the whole thing, but we were hungry... We split two meals; i got lamb with what tasted like Greek potatos (with tomato paste sauce) and salad, and Courtney ordered these delicious fried dough puffs with different kinds of cheese and sauce.

Saturday in Sarajevo

Saturday Courtney and I spent lots of time trying to figure out how we were going to get to Mostar, and through some trips to the bus station and travel agencies and some phone calls, we realized it would be better to go somewhere closer so we wouldn't have to spend so much of the limited time she had here on a bus. So decided to postpone our trip until the next day and hang out some more in Sarajevo on saturday.






We saw these guys playing chess outside. It looks alot more fun than regular chess.











We also visited the National Library/Old Town Hall, which was partially destroyed in the war. This is a photo from far way, where you can't see so much destruction.


Here are some photos of the library from a closer view. The bombing of the library was one of the more publicized atrocities during the war- people said for a while afterwards, the burned pieces of book pages floated through the air like snow and then disintegrated.

































































At night we went to one of my favorite restaurants, Imat Kuca, which is right on the Miljacka River, which runs East-West through the city. I seem to have not taken any photos from there... oops. We both got "Bosanska Konah" (i think that's what it's called) which is like a sample of several Bosnian national dishes. It comes in a metal bowl that it's cooked in, and has several vegetables; onions, peppers and tomatoes, stuffed with minced lamb meat, in this yummy tomato/olive oil/white wine-ish sauce. It also has a mini-kabob, and a huge dollop (sp?) of sour cream/plain yogurt on top, with fresh parsley. Yum.After that we went to a couple bars and clubs-including Sloga which i really like. We went to Hacienda but got sick of the techno and decided to get to bed (relatively) early so we could get an early start the next day.

Wild Goose Chase for Museum with Courtney

Courtney came to visit last weekend from Moscow and it was so fun :) I took off work on Friday and Courtney and I spent the day exploring Sarajevo. I introduced Courtney to Kafa Bosanski- well actually, Tetka Kimeta did... I attempted to make coffee for Tetka a few days before that, and did not understand why she looked like she was going to either throw up or cry, until she made me try what i had made her... it was something along the lines of mud. So now Tetka Kimeta laughs whenever i attempt to make it, and pushes me away from the stove to make it herself. Here is a photo of some yummy kafa (which is very difficult to make!!!)




















We wanted to see this museum that was supposed to have an amazing war exhibit, so we went to what we thought was the Historical Museum. However, there are quite a few museums in Sarajevo with similar names, such as "The Historical Museum of Sarajevo," "Historical Museum," and "Sarajevo Historical Museum." We went to one of the other ones, which was actually located on the corner where Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and started WWI. This is the corner:


















Even though we found the wrong museum, we still wanted to stay and check it out.

After that we went to what we thought was the right museum... but again turned out to be the wrong one. It was still interesting because it was set up in a way as to offer a self-guided tour through the different periods of Bosnian history, with artifacts, clothing, jewelry etc. from Bosnia under occupation by various empires.

After all this searching, we needed some more coffee so we walked through Baščaršija (Turkish Quarters/old town) to the famous pigeon square, which is like the center of the old town. It's very beautiful and there is a fountain in the middle where the pigeons like to hang out.



















































Finally we found the right museum. It was in a heavily damaged building across from the Holiday Inn. The exhibit was really excellent, and we were actually allowed to take photos, which i thought was great.















This is the monument outside the museum. I don't quite understand it...






















The walls of the museum were covered in framed newpaper clippings and photographs of attacks during the siege of Sarajevo, and of citizens' daily lives under siege. Most were too small to take photos of, but i thought this one was particularly poignant.

















"Danger, sniper"














Bosnia's Book of the Dead










Typical apartment set-up in Sarajevo during siege- furniture arranged so as to block snipers' view into windows.









Since there was no water, heat or electricity for a lot of the siege, people made stoves and other household items they could no longer use out of cans, old pipes and anything else they could. During the winters, a lot of people started to chop their furniture up to burn in stoves so they would not freeze.











A package of humanitarian aid. It's in English, which is incredibly helpful. At least it has a picture on it.
























More humanitarian aid.








Something that is not widely known about the humanitarian aid distributed here during the siege: alot of it was from emergency food supplies; dried and canned meat, canned veggies, bread etc. accumulated by the US government. During the Vietnam War.